Who Dare Speak Truth?

It would be only a Rip Van Winkle in America who has never seen or heard of al-Jazeera. That’s the Arab TV network that somehow manages to get regular and frequent access to homemade videos from Osama, al-Zarqawi, al-Zahiri and the cast of psychotic jihadists that seem to populate the Middle East. When one of these nut cases seeks to get the latest word out on how evil the great American Satan is, they simply fire off a DVD to the producers at al-Jazeera and within minutes it’s on the air. Need to show a recent beheading? That’s the network of record for the task. When the Arab street seeks the news, it’s al-Jazeera that they go to.

And, not surprisingly, when al-Jazeera speaks, the American mass media seem to listen more than a little intently as well. It isn’t more than seconds after an al-Jazeera airing that the defeatists of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc. are editing the video down to the most grizzly, anti-American details. Then they shake their heads piously and intone the latest slogans from the anti-war left. Put a potato sack on a terrorist’s head and you’ll get fifty hours of outraged editorializing for the five o’clock news.

Last April, Wall Street Journal contributor Dorrance Smith had the temerity to notice this linkage and opine regarding the connections and the results of those emphases on American policy. Hardly a demand for subversion of the freedom of the press guaranteed by the First Amendment, Smith simply noted that there seemed an unnatural eagerness to cast the U.S. in a bad light and an aggressive policy of publicizing whatever al-Qaeda and the jihadists want distributed. It’s almost romantic to see the beleaguered Osama trudging stoically through the Afghan hillside, beset by the enemy yet still advancing the cause of Islam—reducing the technological progress of the modern world to that of the third century. When a whimpering French journalist is surrounded by strutting kidnappers and about to be shortened by about a head, it’s all America’s fault.

Now, Mr. Smith has been nominated by SecDef Rumsfeld for the position of Ass’t Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. That seems to be a job for which he would be qualified. He’s opposed, however, by that guardian of the nation, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) based on the observations of Mr. Smith regard the apparent collusion between the American major media outlets and al-Jazeera. Take a look here and be sure to follow the link to the original Smith editorial: Calling a Spade a Spade?

Can Mr. Levin argue with the opinion of Mr. Smith? Can he refute the allegations? Does he suggest that questioning al-Jazeera’s objectivity indicates some sort of subversive tendency? What is Sen. Levin suggesting? Does he suspect that America is better off with more jihadist propaganda on the nightly news? Is it essential to Sen. Levin’s re-election that America take a more Osama-friendly view of life?

Just one more example of how warped and convoluted the political process in America is today.